Hop Cultivation. 
2 
Tying. 
Hop bines are tied to the poles by women. Now and then 
it happens that men do this in seasons when the weather is 
forcing, but it is essentially woman's work. Before tying it is 
well to have the strongest rank-growing, “pipy” bines pulled 
out by careful men who know what they are about, as such bines 
are frequently unfruitful. If the bines are strong, two are tied up 
to a pole in three-pole work, that is when three poles are put to 
each stock. In the case of two-pole work three bines are put 
to a pole, but different planters have different ideas on this. 
The hop plants climb with the sun, in contradistinction to the 
French bean and convolvulus, which twine in the opposite 
direction. Directly they have been tied to the poles, the “heads” 
or leading shoots grow upwards and onwards, their curious, 
almost instinctive habit of revolving helping them to find and 
lay hold of the support # as they grow. Darwin gives most 
interesting descriptions of this peculiar habit of the hop plant. 
In one he writes : 
When the shoot of a hop ( Humulus lupulus) rise3 from the ground, 
the two or three first joints, or internodes, are straight, and remain station- 
ary ; but the next, formed while still very young, may be seen to bend to 
one side, and to travel slowly round towards all points of the compass, mov- 
ing like the hands of a watch with the sun. . . . The first purpose of the 
spontaneous revolving movement, or, more strictly speaking, of the continu- 
ous bowing movement, directed successively to all points of the compass i3, 
as Mold has remarked, to favour the shoot finding a support. 1 
As Darwin adds : — 
This i3 admirably effected by the revolutions carried on day and night, 
a wider and wider circle being swept as the shoot increases in length. This 
movement also explains how the plants twine ; for when a revolving shoot 
meets with a support, its motion is necessarily arrested at the point of con- 
tact, but the free projecting part goes on revolving.' 1 
This explains how it is that the hop bines after they have 
been once tied to the poles keep to them. When the support 
has been found by the leading shoot in its revolutions, the re- 
curved hooks with which it is furnished lay hold of the pole 
and keep to it with tenacity. By reason of this admirable 
provision of nature the tyers have in ordinary circumstances but 
little trouble after the bines have once been tied. They fasten a 
1 The Movements and J habits of Climbing Plants. By Charles Darwin, 
M.A., K.R.S. 
1 Sachs in bis Text Book of Botany thus describes this revolving motion of 
the hop plant : “ As new internodes developc from the bud they begin to 
revolve, while the third or fourth ceases to do so, becomes erect and manifests 
another form of movement, becoming twisted until its growth ceases." 
VOL. IV. T. S.— 14 ^ R 
